Archive for the ‘Space Objects’ Category

Early this morning the ISS and a piece of debris from an old Russian weather satellite almost gave one another a bro-like chest bump.

Astronauts had an hour and a half to secure as many of the ISS’s individual modules and get themselves hunkered down into their escape pod (the Soyuz capsule attached to the ISS) and nervously wait to see how it would play out.

While that’s the official word there are a lot of humans on the ground declaring that that’s what NASA wants you to believe and that the “space object” was actually a UFO doing a drive-by of the ISS.

Thankfully the debris or whatever it was went by without incident. NASA gave the astronauts the all-clear a few minutes later.

While safe it’s still a terrifying scenario because orbit is pretty is pretty predictable once things are in it…

Back in 2006 the New Horizon space probe left Earth on mission to visit Pluto.

On July 14th of this year, New Horizon will finally reach its destination and give us a closer look at the piece of rock that was once on the a-list of planets in our neighborhood.

In January New Horizon was brought out of hibernation in preparation for its approach to Pluto.

As photos began coming back showing Pluto in more detail than we’ve ever seen, scientists were a little bummed they weren’t seeing much of Pluto’s little moon-buddy, Charon. That all changed as scientists merged photos from the RALPH and LORRI cameras onboard the probe.

Suddenly they could plainly see the photobombing moon of Charon in the background of the Pluto photos they already had.

New Horizon’s mission includes mapping Pluto (and possibly Charon) and gathering as much info as possible about Pluto. Once it heads away from Pluto it will try to collect information about any object it can come across in the Kuiper Belt before moving into who-knows-where.

Like found footage from an unannounced JJ Abrams flick, video is slamming YouTube from all over Russia about a large meteor that hit the atmosphere.

Details are still coming in about the event and we’ll have a fuller piece about it later.

For now? Grab some popcorn and enjoy a teaser for what the end of the world could look like.

The most amazing video that hit the internet almost immediately is from a driver’s dash-cam as the event takes place (for all of you who have NOT seen videos showing why Russian drivers need dash-cams? You’re depriving yourself)!

Next up? The sound of the sonic boom reaching the street. There have been reports of multiple injuries from exploding glass and falling objects…it’s like an ‘air-quake’!

And as people begin turning their cameras to the sky, the whole JJ Abrams-esque thing begins to manifest as everyone stands around staring at this terrifyingly strange and probably overwhelming event.

December 21st of this year is the big party date for the supposed end of our world.

Sure everyone’s already ordering kegs, ordering faux “Danger: Apocalypse In Progress – Do Not Cross” banner tape by the case and prepping for their end-of-the-world get-togethers.

But then again…everyone hasn’t been watching the news coming out of Mexico that clearly shows an active volcano and something entering it from the sky like an old Thunderbirds vehicle.

Falling star? Busted satellite? No one’s sure at this point but seriously…the odds of something as agile (sarcasm, kids…sarcasm) as a giant mountain full of raging lava catching an object from space? Slim.

We’ll let you put all those party supplies back, start handing you some nails and plywood and make sure your shotgun’s loaded.

Space seems to be the buzz word right now and if you’ve been following this site or its individual members for any length of time, you’ll know how much weight that word has around this place.

On June 5th, the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) on a five-year mission to study the sun, captured these striking images of the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. Now those images have been compiled into one amazing video.

The event takes place in pairs that are eight years apart. The last time this happened was in 2004. Now, eight years later, it happened again and was caught by cameras with 8x the resolution of standard high-definition televisions to create this incredible video.

Now that it’s over we won’t see it happen again until the year 2117!

And by that time the bath salt epidemic will have wiped us out so enjoy it now, kids.

The details of the event itself are sketchy and vague, though the meteorite reportedly left a scar on the boy’s hand before drilling a crater into the ground. We talked to Astronomer Phil Plait about the incident. He gives a great breakdown of the case on his website Bad Astronomy.

Us: So do you think it is at all likely that the kid was hit with a meteorite?

Phil: It’s possible, but there are too many holes in the story. I’m pretty suspicious of this for the obvious reasons — it’s pretty unlikely — but a lot of the story doesn’t add up. He was on his way to school on what’s obviously a suburban street, but no one else saw the flash, the bang, him getting hit? Plus, the Telegraph article misquotes the scientist, so it seems like this is less and less likely the more and more I look at it.”

But if confirmed, this incident will be one of the only known direct meteorite strikes that has occurred since Ann Hodges was struck with a grapefruit size meteorite in 1954, the first known incident in human history. We aren’t holding our breaths just yet.

Calls poured in to 911 dispatchers in Virginia on Sunday describing an unexplained loud boom and a streak of light across the sky. A space.com article published Monday called a Russian rocket falling back to earth the culprit:

The mysterious boom and flash of light seen over parts of Virginia Sunday night was not a meteor, but actually exploding space junk from the second stage of a Russian Soyuz rocket falling back to Earth, according to an official with the U.S. Naval Observatory.

U.S. Strategic Command has since reported that the rocket re-entered Earth’s atmosphere near Taiwan, on the other side of the world, several hours after the reports of the fireball. So both its timing and entry location rule out the rocket as the explanation for the fireball.

Astronomers now believe that it was a meteor, but with only eye-witness testimony to go on, who knows what it was?

Astronomers have identified two massive balls of ice, orbiting a dwarf planet on the fringe of our solar system. According to sciencenews.org:

You’d need a mighty tall glass to hold two space objects that researchers have now identified as ice cubes at the fringes of the solar system. The larger of the icy bodies is about the width of Ohio, the smaller about twice the length of Rhode Island. Both bodies are moons of the dwarf planet Haumea.

Now that’s a lot of ice. It’s nice to know that when we finally get around to colonizing the solar system that there will be no shortage of fresh water to be harvested from these two ice spheres and space objects like them.